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Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus
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dietert1:
Sweden has one of the highest death rates per capita in Europe. I think it will take time until everybody knows somebody who died or remained with severe health problems after infection. That's one of the failures of the media: Counting the dead. Also in a war there are a hundred times more people who return with severe damages or psychological problems and who cannot continue their previous life.
Everybody somewhat awake will try to avoid infection until there will be vaccines. Hope that happens later this year.

Regards, Dieter
Zero999:

--- Quote from: dietert1 on July 12, 2020, 02:40:27 pm ---Sweden has one of the highest death rates per capita in Europe. I think it will take time until everybody knows somebody who died or remained with severe health problems after infection. That's one of the failures of the media: Counting the dead. Also in a war there are a hundred times more people who return with severe damages or psychological problems and who cannot continue their previous life.
Everybody somewhat awake will try to avoid infection until there will be vaccines. Hope that happens later this year.

Regards, Dieter

--- End quote ---
Yes, that's true and is why excess deaths is probably a better measure, but you're right it doesn't account for long term health problems due to COVID-19.

Looking at the numbers of dead at this point in the pandemic is pretty meaningless. We don't know how many people will die in other countries in the near future due to COVID-19. Have the lockdown measures actually saved any lives, or just postponed deaths by a few months? The answer to this question will depend on whether a safe and effective vaccine is developed or not. If we never have a vaccine, then Sweden's approach might be more sensible, since herd immunity will gradually develop, even though that might not have been the goal. The countries who had big lockdowns will still have a large number of people who are not immune, so what will they do then? Impose lockdowns every time there's a flare up? That will prove unsustainable. The lockdown approach only works, if there's a hope of eradicating the virus, or a vaccine being developed.
bd139:
Totally agree on the body count being irrelevant. It's simply about nations desperately trying to look less bad than other ones rather than any actual meaningful statistics.

I suspect the politicians are running scared and that's why we're hearing a lot about it.
Zero999:

--- Quote from: bd139 on July 12, 2020, 06:01:36 pm ---Totally agree on the body count being irrelevant. It's simply about nations desperately trying to look less bad than other ones rather than any actual meaningful statistics.

I suspect the politicians are running scared and that's why we're hearing a lot about it.

--- End quote ---
We'll only know when the pandemic is over, which will be when we either have herd immunity, be it naturally, or due to a vaccine, or a cheap marvellous new treatment which stops the virus doing any harm. Then, I think the best metric will be number of socioeconomic-disability adjusted, human life-years lost, rather than the number of lives, which will apply more weight to younger lives lost, not just to COVID, but because they didn't get treated for other illnesses, due to lockdowns, or care capacity being filled by COVID-19 patients.

At the moment we need to edge towards something resembling the Swedish model of sustainable social distancing and contact tracing, to keep the number of cases manageable levels. If we have good enough contact tracing and do enough testing, perhaps even mandate it for workplaces where there's a high risk of the virus spreading, such as care homes, hospitals and meat processing plants, then any quarantines can be very small and localised.
bd139:
Indeed. Unfortunately I suspect that entire process will be immediately broken by the sheer number of stupids out there  :palm:
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